About “Here Is No Why”

The song’s title is reminiscent of Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir where, in response to the protagonist asking “Warum?” -“Why?”, a guard response “Hier ist kein warum” – “There is no why here.”

The title actually came from a tragedy and atrocity of equal proportion to that of Auschwitz. Corgan explains in his 2012 reissue liner notes:

This title was appropriated from an article
I’d read on an anniversary of the world’s
first nuclear attacks. A survivor, in survey-
ing a legacy of near-total devastation, had remarked in broken English that ‘Here is
no why.’

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This title was appropriated from an article I’d read on an anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attacks. A survivor, in surveying a legacy of near-total devastation, had remarked in broken English that ‘Here is no why.’ Looking at the twisted remnants of my own childhood memories, I felt a similar sense of loss amidst my confusion. To hide some of my sorrow I couched those thoughts into this glammed up tart that rings neither happy nor sad. In some respects this song doesn’t really fit in well amongst the others; being too maudlin for its own good and too strident to take full advantage of its T-Rexian strut. But like its author ‘The Death Rock Boy’, its most glaring defects are part of its lingering charm.